Mirror Magic II

Welcome to

   M I R R O R M A G I C   I I
   ---------------------------

A game for Unix/X11, DOS and Windows by Holger Schemel.
(c) 1994-2000 by Holger Schemel.

Introduction
============
This is a nice little game with color graphics and sound for your
Unix system with color X11, DOS or Windows. You need an 8-bit color
display or better.
It will not work on black&white systems, and maybe not on gray scale
systems.

It was first released as "Mindbender" in the year 1989 on the Amiga
(with ports on other computer systems) and is in fact a clone of the
C64 game "Deflektor". As the Amiga is a bit outdated now, I decided
to port it to Unix systems and later to DOS and Windows.


Getting started
===============
Just 'cd' to the 'mirrormagic' directory and type 'mirrormagic'!
This works only on Linux boxes, because the included binary was
compiled for Linux systems. If you have another Unix system like
HPUX, NetBSD or SUN, you first have to type 'make' to compile it.
This may be needed on Linux systems, too, if you have an older
system (kernel, libraries, ...).


The Menues
==========
You can see eight blue circles on the left side of the eight green menu
texts; these are buttons to activate the menu commands by simply clicking
on them with the left mouse button. The button will then change to red.

The menu 'name'
---------------
First, you have to choose a player name. Just click on the button for the
'name' menu. The screen will change and offer 10 player names to choose
from. At the first time, they will all be 'no name'. Choose the last
entry 'enter new name', choose one of the 'no name' fields and type in
your name. It will then appear as the actual player's name on the main
screen.

If you choose a certain special name, you will be in a cheat mode where
you can choose all levels without playing the lower levels before... :)

The menu 'level'
-----------------
If you have played some levels of this game, you can choose the already
played levels at any time, but you cannot choose the higher levels. This
means, you can choose levels from level 0 to the highest level that you
have ever won. This is known as your 'handicap'.

To choose a level, click on the two buttons on the left or right hand of
the level field. If you click on the button left of the text 'level',
the level field will switch to '50' or, if >=50, back to '00'. This is
because the levels '50' to '99' are empty, but you can build your own
mirrormagic levels with the built-in level editor.

Hall of fame
------------
Click on this button to see a list of the best players of this level.
Click again to go back to the main menu.

Level creator
-------------
This brings you to the level editor, if you have switched to level 50
or higher, which are empty and can be filled by yourself. See below.

Info screen
-----------
This screen shows you all elements which appear in the 50 levels.
Click again to go back to the main menu.

Start game
----------
This will start the game.

Setup
-----
To change some things in the game, use the setup menu.
You can enable/disable "Sound" (enables/disables _all_ sounds in
the game), "Sound loops" (only allowed on Linux systems with
VoxWare[tm] sound driver; don't worry if you never heard of it --
it's the name of the standard Linux sound driver), "Game music"
(can always be enabled on very fast systems [exception: you don't
like it], on slower systems it will take some percent of CPU time
which will slow things down a bit) and "Toons", which will forbid/
permit the little animated toons.

"Exit" quits the setup menu without saving the changes, "Save and exit"
will save and then return to the main menu.

Quit
----
Exit the game.


How To Play The Game
====================
When the game has started, you can see the playfield on the left side
and a control field on the right side. The control field contains the
following elements:

Level indicator		Tells you what level you are playing.

Spell counter		Shows you how many 'spells' you still need
			to win the current level.

Score counter		Shows the current score. In some levels there
			are some extra items giving extra score points.

Music On/Off		The two buttons (red and green) left and right
			of the 'stop' button can be used to disable /
			enable background music. On slower systems (and a
			486DX33 with Soundblaster _is_ a slower system)
			it increases the game speed to turn off back-
			ground music. You can completely turn off all
			sound effects in the setup menu, although it is
			much more fun to have them enabled when it
			doesn't eats up to much speed.

			(Note: On a stock Amiga 500 (with MC68000, 7 MHz)
			from the year 1987, on which this game originally
			was developed, the graphics, the sound and the
			overall gameplay was _much_ more smooth than on
			a 486DX/33 with accelerated Cirrus 5426 graphics and
			a Soundblaster Pro. The Amiga version had some
			additionally background music and, yes, it all ran
			in multitasking with AmigaOS. But you may have a
			Pentium100 anyway. Just a note.)

			(Another note: The sound server currently needs
			about 10% CPU time on my 486DX/33/SBPro system
			when playing background music. I wonder if this
			would get better with a better soundcard, like
			Gravis Ultrasound, or if only pure CPU power
			helps in this case...)

Stop button		Click here to stop the current game. You are
			asked if you really want to quit, so you can
			use this button as a pause button, too.

Fuel (blue)		Shows you how many time is left to finish the
			current level ('magic energy').

Heat (red)		Shows you if the magic beam is overheated. If
			this reaches the top, the game is over.

On the left side you can see the playfield itself. Your task is to get
all the 'magic kettles' which contain 'magic spell ingredients'. To get
them, you have to hit them with the 'magic beam' that starts from the
magician. The gnomes (with red hats) each have a rotatable mirror which
can be rotated by clicking with the left or right mouse button, so you
can reflect the 'magic beam' to another direction. If you have gotten
all the 'magic kettles' (the ones with the color cycling, if you play
at an X server with read/write colors), the 'magic door' opens and you
only have to direct the 'magic beam' to this door to end the game. If
you have some time left you will get a time bonus and see your placement
in the hall of fame.

To complicate the game, the following levels will contain more and more
of some strange elements to help you in the level or to make it harder.

You can see them all on the 'info screen' from the main menu. Just try
out what they do when you see them in a new level - you will quickly
find it out... :)

The Level Editor
================
To build your own levels, just choose a level number between 50 and 99
and then choose 'level creator' from the main menu. You then will see
all available elements on the right side. Just choose the element you
want to place from the right and place it on the left side. All three
mouse buttons are mapped to draw in the playfield, the middle or the
right one erases the filed under the mouse button - I have forgotten
which one, just try it out! ;)

'clear' clears the level, 'exit' saves it after a confirmation.



And Now Have Fun!
=================
Have fun playing the game, building new levels and breaking all high
scores! ;)

If you have any comments, problems, suggestions, donations, flames,
send them to

	info()artsoft.org

or Snail Mail

	Holger Schemel
	Detmolder Strasse 189
	33604 Bielefeld
	GERMANY

Have fun,
		Holger